Welcome to my blog and my first entry! I want to take a minute to talk about how I intend to use this space. My initial thought was to post tips to help marketers solve problems and tune up their creative. I'll definitely do that, but I'd also like to respond in real time to creative I see pop up in my email and in my mail box; a combination of how-to fundamentals and in-the-moment reviews that are seasonally or market relevant. As for timing, I'll try and get to this weekly -  I'll post an update notice on Linkedin. 

I'll provide lots of good information that you are welcome to put to work for your brand. As you begin to see how applying these tested creative techniques can improve your business, you may want to expand the effort, if so I'd love to lend a hand, (sorry, blog followers don't get a discount,  just a head start on better response and improved sales). 

Okay, like the subhead promises, here's a handy little "result driven" tip:

Put on your customer hat! 

Be sure your site and catalog are customer centric. It sounds obvious, but creative execution can easily become self-centered and drift from the target audience. To keep your creative on track dig out your brand positioning and customer profile and create a handy brief that you can distribute to your creative team. Think about it this way; everything the creative team does either adds or subtracts from your brand value. So next time you're assessing creative ask yourself two questions: Will the presentation strongly resonate with the target audience? And, is the presentation adding or subtracting from the brand value?

The target customer informs the brand, the brand informs the creative so it resonates with the customer and drives response.. Voila!